A Stained Glass Variation of the Truth
by scorpionmother
Summary: Ethan returns after leaving Vanessa and being away a year desperate to punish himself for the pain he's inflicted but finds that the reality if very different to his fantasy of suffering. The title comes for a line in Neptune from Sleeping at Last's EP Space 2
1. Chapter 1

London. It was as if he had never been away. The last year but a moment, which in this city steeped in history and time, is all it is. The stench, the corruption the utter disillusionment of the fetid lives that circle each other scrapping and fighting every day for survival. A city of the unkind and the unwashed and yet here he had been more at home than anywhere else in his cursed life. Here was home because she was here. It was a certainty. He could only envision her here even though it was on the moors in the tiny, rude cottage when she seemed the most real he'd ever seen her, vibrant, solid, carefree even. She is not there now his lady of the demi-monde. She was here in this city existing in the veil between reality and fantasy. That time past was no truth as she was not – she was the ultimate lie her goddess face hiding the soul of a demon – as does his. It was an illusion as fleeting as that stormy night when he'd pressed her rain cold body to his, felt her mouth move with his for a perfect moment before true reality crashed in on them beginning the series of events that led to him ascertaining that a path away from her was his only option. How wrong he'd been and how he'd suffered.

For a long while he'd revelled in the suffering, he felt vindicated paying for his crimes in the heart-wrenching pain he experienced being removed from the balm of her presence. He took that pain deep inside himself – assimilating it soul deep to fester like an ever open sore constantly tearing at it with remembrances of her. The eternal blue of her eyes holding him captive from the first moment she'd turned them towards him, her fingers firm on his skin, her voice husky, deep timbered with such a formal measure tone almost like it wasn't her first or preferred language. Her infrequent smiles that appeared as sudden and unexpected as summer lightning. She shadowed his thoughts and haunted his dreams and he welcomed it - a type of masochistic pleasure. The raven of her hair was the metaphorical whip which he chastised the flesh of his mind flaying himself raw, a martyr to the memory of her and what she'd offered him.

But he found that that memories fade, they became less sharp under the ministrations and excesses of the whiskey and narcotics he indulged in just to get through the night hours. That the sharp sting was fading. He needed physical barbs to keep the scabs of his pain wide open. He began to search out women that looked like her to further his hurt. Small, delicate with hair as dark as night and sapphire eyes but they were phantoms only, shadows of her reality and bandaged the pain rather than exacerbated it. And it was then her realised that the pure white pain that he craved would only come from the actuality of her presence and hearing her reject him. His last memory of her had been of acceptance an offering of love. For him to survive in his self-inflicted cocoon of exquisite suffering he needed to supersede that to see and experience the rage of her hatred. Because hate him she must. For all her utterances of forgiveness that night she was not a creature to pardon. Her passions were too primordial, too dark. He knew the hatred would rot within her. He would open himself to that – exult in it - absorb it into his soul and then fight her tooth and claw to claim her, to win her back so that he could torture himself further. To live every moment next to her secretly flagellating his soul for ever leaving her. That earning her love would be a constant reminder of the pain of losing her. He knew it was perverse but so was he, he needed to suffer to be at peace.

And so he'd returned. Returned to this city of a thousand horrors adding with his presence, one more to its number. For days now he'd circled Grandage Place. Always streets away but close enough to feel her to know she was only within minutes, yards of his scrutiny – enjoying the exquisite torture of prolonging the agony that would be their meeting. But as days crept into a week he could sense a foreboding a wrongness that he was not expecting and which he could not face without some knowledge of the situation and so he moved across the river to those dingy rooms in Shad Thames that he'd visited only once before but again in a time of suffering.

"He left mate, about 9 month ago. He was sick – I hadn't realised how. He was never much one for company. Kept strange hours and then about a year since he just locked himself away. Then he left. Well I say left was rather taken but bloody hell I wouldn't have minded." Victor Frankenstein's landlord a verbose man assaulted his senses with the stink of many weeks of stale sweat and the excess of the previous night's intake of cheap whiskey and beer.

"What do you mean, taken? Taken where? By who?"

"Christ I don't know her name, it's not for the likes of me or you, no offense mate, to ask. I can tell you she was a lady. A right proper one and beautiful to boot. Hair black as coal and eyes like a winter sky. I thought lucky bloke that doctor to be acquainted with the likes of her. If she'd asked me I'd have travelled up the devil's arse, just for a smile, no word of a lie. The doc, well he looked like he was at death's door. She had me carry him down stairs – he weighed less than a kid I reckon. Looked like he'd been taking something." He laid his finger against his nose conspiritively.

Ethan wasn't surprised by the doctor's decline. He'd seen evidence of his addiction but had chosen to ignore it wrapped as he had been in her safety, fighting for her soul and losing his in the process.

"So is he still with her now? Has he ever been back? Has she?" He pressed another coin into the man's greasy palm.

"I'm not sure – I mean he'd be a bloody idiot if he did leave her – a woman like that."

For a moment he was back in her room before those curtains listening to her reassurances offering him her acceptances, but was brought back by the man's next words.

"Thinking on it, she did come back a few times ya' know just to collect a few things, check up on his stuff she said and pay the rent but she hasn't been for ages more the pity. I'd have liked to take another cop at her if you know what I mean. Then about a week or two back he dropped in unexpected like. Looked in the pink of health he did and happy. He went in for about an hour. Came out with a bag and paid me to keep the place for him. Gave me a year's rent and more in advance like. Happy to do it mate. Easy money."

Ethan thanked the man slipping him a few more coins and walked away slowly his mind chewing over the information trying to make sense of what it meant to him and to Vanessa. So the doctor was still living at Grandage Place with Vanessa who'd obviously nursed him back to health from his addiction. But what of Sir Malcolm? Had he returned from Africa? What would his reception be now he did not just have to deal with her? However he was still at a loss to explain why the sensations around the house felt so strange and unfamiliar if it was only Victor there with her or Sir Malcolm too. There was something more, something had changed to make that place so wrong or someone else was there – a threat to all of them. He was so deeply lost in these thoughts that it took him several moments to realise that someone was calling his name. He looked up, his eyes squinting in ray of sunlight that had penetrated the greyness of the Spring sky and looked directly into the face of Victor Frankenstein leaning out of a cab.

At first, as he exited the carriage he barely recognised the man before him as the same man from a year ago. He was still pale but not with the deathly pallor he'd always worn before. His pale blue eyes were bright, naturally so, not enhanced by opiates and he had gained a little weight which suited his fine frame making his body look lithe and healthy.

"Ethan. Is it really you? Oh my God you are a sight for sore eyes. Where have you been? How long have you been back? Christ man we've been so worried." The pleasure in the younger man's eyes was a surprise as they had never been particularly close even at the end, but he took heart in it and gripped the doctor's hand warmly in his own.

"Doc, what you doing here? I've just been to your rooms but they told me you'd left with Miss Ives months ago and that you were sick. Are you still at Grandage Place, is she still there and safe?" and then unspoken "and does she still hate me?"

"Yes, yes she's there and well. We both are. And Sir Malcolm is also returned from Africa but is not in the best of health. He suffered a mild stroke on the day of his return about three months past. He's better but his recovery is slower than I'd like. Vanessa and I have been busy looking after him, amongst other things…." His voice trailed off and he looked slightly embarrassed.

In the dark of that night Ethan would recall those words, the colour that rose in the young doctor's cheeks and the brightness in his eyes and his unusual use of her first name and curse his lack of insight. But for now it did not register as unusual.

"Tell me about it doc, yep we've all be busy. I'm sorry about Sir Malcolm do you know what caused it. Is he well enough for visitors?" He tried to keep his voice casual not to sound desperate to get to the house, to see her, to feel the pain of being in her presence again.

"Yes of course, he'd love to see you and Vanessa too. We often talk of you. She tried to find you, you know, after you'd disappeared but it was like you'd fallen off the earth. Where did you go?" Victor ushered him into the cab he'd climbed down from and settled down in the seat opposite.

"To hell and back Doc. To hell and back."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Grandage Place was the same even to the metal door that they'd installed the day after the evening Hecate and her minions had infiltrated the house in search of Vanessa's hair to finish the fetish that had housed for a time the soul of the devil that she'd overthrown. It loomed tall, and proud over the street and yet that in itself was reassuring. In this house he'd seen the best and the worst of her. Here she'd suffered mortal peril and returned stronger. Here she'd offered him every reason to stay. Here he'd walked away from her love and acceptance and here he would win her back to suffer for an eternity as he deserved and wished for.

"Any sign of them? Have they been back?" He couldn't bear to think of her in danger without him even though some part of him still felt it was him that represented the greatest danger to her body and her soul.

"The witches. No. We've seen no sign thank God. At times I think she does sense something – danger maybe but she saying nothing – brushes it off– this past week she's seemed a little preoccupied, but I know better than to push her. She'll confide when she's ready." He smiled and led him to the front door tapping lightly on the door to be admitted by a uniformed stranger.

"Bennet, this is Mr Chandler. He'll be staying for dinner."

"Very good sir." The large and capable man took their coats and his hat and headed for the kitchen in the back. Ethan felt his heart twist. It should have been Sembene there welcoming him back in his stoic way, no visible emotion but maybe just the warming of his eyes. But Sembene slain at his hand, lay in the dark red earth of his home and he could still taste the coppery tang of his blood in his memory.

Victor looked very much at ease but Ethan barely noticed. His thoughts were in turmoil. He was so close. He could almost smell the wild stormy scent of her. In moments he'd see her beautiful face, see those eyes fill with hatred and hear his name spat like some foul taste. Maybe she'd fly at him. Scratch and claw at his face. Rake her nails across his flesh and he'd let her just to feel the pain of having her near him the agony of those hands once again on his skin.

"Vanessa." Victor called in the direction of the room he'd always associated with her although he'd only ever entered it once.

"Victor, you're home at last." Her voice was as he remembered although it sounded lighter as it had when they'd escaped to the cottage on the moors and the very sound of it pierced his soul blood deep, suffering radiated through him in waves. He stepped back into the shadow of the hall. He wanted to see her as she was, to enjoy her for one selfish moment before he faced her wrath.

And then she was there in front of him. Her hair piled artfully on top of her head, dark tendrils escaping to frame her face softening the sharpness of her cheekbones. She was dressed simply and he observed in those seconds not in her accustomed black. A high necked lace blouse that clung, moulding closely to her delicate figure decorated with a dark blue ribbon that matched the silk skirt she wore. She looked fresh, youthful and akin to hope. She was as beautiful as he remembered but there was something different and it was only when the blue of her eyes turned to Victor and she walked towards him, taking his hand in hers and laying a warm kiss on his cheek did he see what it was. She was happy. She was happy because of Victor.

And then the realisation hit him. The doctor's words, gestures, the comfortable way he was in the house, the way he'd spoken about her it all added up and with a growing horror he looked at her hand. The hand that he'd thought only moment ago would raise to his face to rake and tear to cause him physical pain but that in fact the mere sight of in that second exposed his heart and ripped it out of his chest. On the fourth finger of her hand gleamed a simple golden band and its twin graced the same finger of the doctor's left hand.

He could not help the gasp of breath that tore from his lungs and she turned the joy in her eyes as she laid them on him for the first time in a year turning not as he'd hoped to hatred and venom but a mirror of his own pain.

Victor was oblivious and pulled her towards him.

"Ethan, I know it sounds foolish since you already know each other but much has changed as I am sure you realise. A week past Vanessa Ives made me the happiest man alive. Therefore may I now introduce you to Mrs. Vanessa Frankenstein, my wife."


	2. Chapter 2

"Fuck me." The expletive tore from his lips before he could stop it. It was a joke his shattered heart screamed. A perverse fucking joke. He'd wanted to suffer, to let the darkness of suffering consume him, to overwhelm but not like this. This was not the agony he'd choreographed in his head that his psyche had allowed him imagine. Instead he felt total numbness like his capacity for feeling had fled, been stripped from him like the skin from his back when his sadistic father had taken a belt, buckle end to him. He still bore those scars but this would rend even deeper into his soul.

He saw in Victor's eyes the same bewilderment found in a child's so proud of an achievement who is then told it is not good enough, his smile fading almost comedically although the situation was so far from amusing to be tragic. But she had regained something akin to pose. He watched her in those seconds after the initial shock, the obvious pain of seeing him steel herself, the air around her almost tangibly becoming cooler and her eyes becoming more cold than he'd ever seen them. It was as if she'd turned something off inside of her, her heat, her rage, her passion and she was now an unapproachable goddess. He could see none of the hatred his addicted soul craved. He could only see indifference and it scared him.

"Well Mr. Chandler I see since you've been away you've lost none of your mastery of the correct turn of phrase for all social occasions."

Her tone sounded warm but he recognised the mockery and spite that lurked behind it. She turned towards the man by her side raising a gentle hand to his face that felt to him like a slap against his. "Victor I believe we have somewhat surprised our guest with our happy news. Quick we must seat him and offer him a drink before he falls down." She turned away towards the parlour casting over her shoulder, "Bourbon, Mr Chandler?"

Victor's face had lost that little boy lost look and was smiling with adoration at her retreating form. A stab of jealousy ripped through him and he saw in his mind eye a scenario where he hit him. Hit him again and again until his face pulverised into a crimson bloody pulp under his knuckles which would only stop when there was nothing solid to connect with. He fought this urge, as well as another - to run. To place as much distance as he could between him and them; their obvious happiness, their comfort in each other, their peace. He'd come here looking for pain but had found something so much worse.

In a haze he followed Victor into the parlour to find nothing physical had changed although it felt like it should have. The revelation told with such joy had destroyed his point of reference so that the familiarity he was greeted with seemed alien and unfriendly. Vanessa had taken her seat on the left of the fire place and she sat there ram-rod straight with a smile on her face that didn't reach her eyes. He took the other chair opposite to her and they sat in agonised silence both sets of eyes fixed on Victor as he bustled about pouring drinks filling Vanessa in on the story of how he and Ethan had met so unexpectedly that afternoon. The blank look in her eyes only faltered only for a moment when Victor told her how Ethan's first interest had been on her safety.

"You always said he was your protector, my dear." He smiled as he bent down to hand her a small brandy his fingers tips brushing against hers. Ethan could feel the tension building inside him and tore his eyes away from the picture in front of him, the care he could feel radiating between them struck like ice.

"But he is no longer needed, I have you to protect me now Victor." There was such a tone of sincerity in her voice and he looked back to find her eyes again on his burning, blank and cold.

He accepted his drink and fought the urge to down it and walk straight for the bottle. But he knew to do that would betray his feelings too much and she would be looking, judging him. If he was to survive even a few minutes in her company he needed to slam his own emotional barriers into place although every fibre of his being wanted to crawl in servitude over the floor to her feet and beg her for forgiveness. When did she become so frozen? His brain screamed as he watched her seem to enjoy her drink and the company. But he knew this was a lie that she couldn't wait to see him leave that there was no place for him he was unwelcome and unwanted, a thorn in her side and stone in her shoe – she had discarded him for the bloodless doctor. And yet still the comfort of the pain that he has so longed for still refused to coalesce – he felt only rejection and humiliation.

Victor began to talk about some work he'd been doing at the local hospital when Ethan suddenly remembered Sir Malcolm and what the younger man had divulged to him on their journey to the house.

"Can I see Sir Malcolm? I feel wrong to be in his house and not to present myself."

Victor broke off with a slight scowl and Vanessa answered her tone sharp.

"He's asleep. I'm sorry he needs all the rest he can. Another time, maybe." The pause was all he needed.

"Maybe tomorrow then. I'm sorry Victor, Ms Iv…, Mrs. Frankenstein but I've just remembered I have a prior appointment that I must attend to. Forgive me but I must go." He stood throwing the rest of the harsh liquid down his throat and began to back out of the room.

Victor again looked confused and again he had to fight the urge to punch him, to betray the full extent of what she'd married – what she'd chosen over him.

"But Ethan you said you'd stay for dinner, we've got so much to catch up on."

"Forgive me." He directed this straight at Vanessa looking straight into her eyes as he backed away towards the door. He saw her eyes spark just for a moment the pain was back like a shadow and then she waved her hand imperiously, like she was dismissing him.

"Let him go Victor, if it is his want. It's not like he's never left before." And with that she rose from her chair and stood in front of the fire her arms wrapped round her waist, her back to him.

Victor followed him out of the door hovering as the seemingly terse new servant Bennet handed him his coat and hat.

"Ethan, do you really have to go? It seems such a shame. I'm sorry about my w…." he seemed to stumble, "Vanessa, I really can't think why she was like that. She's always talked about you with such affection before and then she seemed so suddenly cold. I'll speak to her see what could have upset her so." The look of concern was back making him look more like the self he remembered.

"Don't. It's not necessary. It was just the shock I'm sure and the fact that we didn't part on the best of terms. I would like to see Sir Malcolm, maybe you could send me a message when it's a good time?" He gave Victor his address and then moved towards the door and freedom. At the last moment he looked back though the open door of the parlour. She was still standing there, cold, unapproachable, like ice and the same numbness flooded over him again. He wanted her to scream at him, physically assault him, hurl abuse and yet she was silent as a grave.

He practically ran for the door and out into the cold of the night ramming his hat onto his head desperate to put as much distance between himself and his lost hope. His brain, as he strode towards his lodgings played out the scenes that he'd left behind. A cosy dinner, set by candle light. Her asking questions about his day. Laughing at a shared story. Retiring to the parlour to share a drink, maybe read poetry together before climbing the stairs to their shared room. Him moving towards her with purpose. Her eyes darkening with desire. His fingers undoing the buttons of her blouse, his hands running down her sides, gripping her hips his mouth moving on hers softly but becoming firmer, more insistent. Her breathy gasps as his lips and teeth move down her neck. His hands caressing under her clothes, pushing her back on the bed their clothes melting away in their frenzied passion. His eyes devouring her alabaster skin mouth moving to tease her peaked nipples, her head thrown back in abandon, her mouth red, open gasping her pleasure. Him pushing inside her silken wetness, moving in her, her moans of pleasure becoming frenzied until she shudders around him, her desire spent, her passion coalescing by her screaming out his name.

"Christ, no!" he lifted his head and howled into the night sky. His nails bit into his palms drawing blood as his fists connected over and over again with the brick wall in front of him until the pain he desired exploded through the numbness. He looked down at the bloody mess he'd made of his knuckles. They were raw almost to the bone and already starting to swell. He wanted to gouge his hands into his brain and tear out the images that ran wild round his fevered brain. He knew only one way to cleanse himself. Down the neck of a whiskey bottle; many whiskey bottles in the warm embrace of intoxication and eventual oblivion.


	3. Chapter 3

A mild non-consensual act - I am very against sexual violence but I wanted to show Ethan brought as low as he could be. I don't mean to offend and hope that I don't.

He couldn't work out if the pounding was in his head or coming from the door. The only thing he was totally conscious of was that it had woken him and he wished to Christ it hadn't. His throat burned, his stomach felt liked he'd been repeatedly and viciously kicked and there was a throbbing in his abused hands that probably meant he'd broken at least a few bones. Awareness exploded in on him like the sun that was streaming in from the window where he'd failed to pull the drapes that last evening and he realised that his head was throbbing but in a different rhythm to the vibrations that had woken him. He managed to drag his carcass that felt like a lead weight off the hardness of the floor that was littered with evidence of last night's excess. An empty whiskey bottle lay on the rug another tipped over on the carpet almost empty although how much of that was in his system and how much on the floor was uncertain.

He'd started drinking the moment he walked through the door not even stopping to remove his coat and hat. He went at it with dedication, pouring and tossing down shot after shot relentless in his need to obliterate not only his imaginings of what was happening at Grandage Place in the peace and darkness of their marital bed but what he'd seen in the parlour during the torturous moments he'd spent in their presence. Her happiness, his adoration the comfort and mutual need that radiated between them. That could have been his, his peace, his comfort. Her eyes turning to his in joy at his return. Her hand reaching up to caress his cheek as she'd done before. He could still remember her touch, firm and knowing, promising so much. Her lips would have been his to claim, her body his to pleasure and take pleasure from. But he'd taken what she'd offered and discarded it like something vile. And now he didn't even have pain to comfort him, he was beyond pain, ruined and made indifferent by his selfish stupidity.

The rattling of the door handle brought him back again to the present and he lumbered to feet moving unsteadily towards the door and whoever was so insistent on gaining entry. He was going to make then pay and if it was Victor he'd hit him.

Luckily the key was in the lock. It took him a few moments to gather the co-ordination to turn the key in the door his injured hands screaming in protest as splinters dug deep into the meat of his knuckles. He yanked the door open viciously but the torrent of abuse that had been hanging on his swollen mouth was snatched away by the sight that met his eyes.

She was perfect, cool, calm and collected in a skirt and coat of warm dove grey piped in the sapphire blue of her eyes. Her hair was simply dressed and her hands, as always were un-gloved despite the coolness still in the air the cold gleam of gold a physical reminder of how she'd moved beyond him.

"Vanessa." It was all he could manage and it came out on a croak that betrayed how he'd spent the time since running from her presence, as well as the obvious stink of cheap spirits that emanated from himself and his rooms.

Her eyes were still detached and it seemed to him that her beautiful mouth curved in disgust but not surprise at the state she'd found himself in.

"I see you have resorted to your usual coping mechanism. Why am I not surprised. You need to pull yourself together and come with me. For some reason Sir Malcolm is insisting on seeing you immediately. I'll wait in the carriage downstairs. I need you to hurry." She turned to go.

"Wait, please Vanessa, don't go." He put out his hand not daring to touch her and she flicked her eyes down which widened at what she saw.

"God Ethan what have you done to your hands?" She pushed past him into the room, shutting the door behind her. "Sit down, I'd better clean those up. I suppose you've been fighting." She gestured him towards the bed and went straight to the jug and bowl on the night stand pouring the water into the bowl and bringing a towel with her. She removed her coat and hung it carefully on the back of a chair. He watched the stretch of her muscles underneath the white lace and silk blouse that the removal of her coat exposed, the graceful shrug of her shoulders, the hint of her corset under the fine material. Her unexpected use of his first name provided him with his first glimmer of hope.

"Only a wall." He murmured but she ignored this quip and asked if he had first aid materials. He indicated the desk by the window and she quickly collected the materials there.

The pain of her ministrations was agonising but he did not believe she was being purposely rough, her touch was light but purposeful and his hands were soon cleaned and skilfully bandaged. Even with the hangover that was pounding through his body he was so aware of her closeness. Her hands on his, her leg almost touching his, her hair as she bent over almost brushing against his skin. And her scent, just as he remembered storm wild, fresh as a morning on the moor.

Lust knifed through his body and before he knew what he was doing and before she could rise, he'd lunged towards her his mouth cleaving to hers his tightly bandaged hands grabbing her shoulders. The touch of her the taste of her mouth under his felt so good, so right. He pushed her down onto the bed desperate to feel more his hands scrabbling to yank the blouse out of the waist band of her skirt and then down to pull her skirt up. His fevered brain imagined ripping her clothes to shreds to plunge into her to feel her move under him in the wildness he craved so he could feel something as he took her hard, fast - so he could feel something.

But something stayed him as his hands finally found the skin of her thigh. In his imaginings she would meet his passion with that of her own but she did not move she lay still, cold, unmoving beneath his hands and mouth. She did not fight him but nor did she welcome him – she was unyielding.

He pulled away horrified by what he'd done and by the look of utter distain in her eyes. His alcohol soaked brain suddenly realising that he'd tried to rape her. Force himself on her, the woman that he supposedly loved. The woman that he'd promised to protect but had tried to violate because he was jealous, because she was someone else's.

"Vanessa, I'm sorry. Fuck, I don't know what happened. Believe me I don't want, I never wanted to hurt you. For…"

She sat up and her hand connected with the side of his head causing pain to explode through every brain cell. Then the hand that had just struck him grasped his throat.

"Don't say it. Don't ever ask me again to forgive you. To forgive you I'd have to feel something for you. Hear this Ethan Chandler I can never forgive you anything because I feel nothing for you, not even hatred. You mean nothing to me and you actions just now only confirm how right I am to cast you off. I asked you in my time of greatest need to walk with me but you were too afraid, too wrapped up in your own self-loathing to accept my love, to stand with me. I have no need of you now. Victor was there and he is now what I need. I stand with him and you mean nothing. I have to see you because we will be forced together due to mutual acquaintance and by Sir Malcolm's want but it will mean nothing to me. But I warn you touch me again and I will destroy you. You have seen what I am capable of and don't ever think I am beyond that. I will cast myself into the blackest night before I let you touch me again." Her voice was rough and full of pain but her eyes said nothing and it was that lack of feeling that scared him so deeply.

"What have I done to you?" He could hear the horror in his own voice the desolation at his destruction of something so precious.

Her laughter sounded harsh and brittle and in a way seemed to stay in the air.

"You set me free. Now get changed and meet me in the carriage down stairs." Carefully she righted her clothes, picked up her coat and was gone.

The carriage ride was excruciating. She refused to even look at him and he couldn't take his eyes off of her. She looked so delicate almost like he could crush her but it was just, as he knew to his peril, a façade. The beast that lurked in her soul was a thousand times more dangerous than even his on a blood moon and it seemed to have turned all its rage to focus on him. His body felt like it had been torn apart limb from limb and he ached to lie back in the comfort and balm of her arms, to feel her raven tresses fall down to shield him and to lose himself forever in the sky of her eyes. But that was just an illusion that his fevered brain constructed so he didn't have the face the truth. That he didn't have to accept her utter indifference towards him. His brain raged. Why had he done that to her? Tried to violate her knowing what he knew about what intimacy could bring out in her? That although she practised promiscuity that in fact her Catholic upbringing still caused her to view all kinds of sexual trysts as sinful. It made a lie of his love for her. He'd lost her forever.

On arrival she exited the carriage almost before it had fully stopped and the front door of 8 Grandage Place was opened as she stepped onto the threshold leaving him to scurry after her.

She walked straight to the door of her parlour and not slowing her step and with her back still to him said,

"Sir Malcolm is in the library."

The door closed behind her the quiet click of the latch the snap of manacles around his shattered heart.

His coat and hat was taken by the reticent Bennett and he was escorted to the library and bade to enter.

Sir Malcolm sat behind his desk and at first glance he looked little changed but as Ethan came closer he saw the ravages that illness had inflicted on this once strong and proud man. The chair in which he sat was wheeled, evidence that he could not walk although whether that was permanent was unclear. His hands were twisted and appeared crippled in some way and the left side of his face had dropped slightly showing the red inside of his lower eyelid and causing his lip into a permanent curl. However his eyes were bright and full of their usual intelligence.

"You're back." His voice was slurred but Ethan could understand him. "Too late Mr. Chandler or should I sat Talbot? Yes I know your secrets, I know who you are and what you've done."

"And Vanessa?" His voice was calm betraying none of the terror those words has struck into his heart.

"A little but not everything. I want to protect her as much as I am sure you do even now. Even though with her actions she's opened you up and gutted you like all those tribes you slaughtered. And you believed you deserved pain, for leaving her alone, abandoning her but you never imagined this did you? You never thought you'd lose to the likes of him."

"Isn't that what you wanted?" He spat it out before he could think his anger boiling up inside him like a storm. "You always favoured him, I suppose because he reminded you of your son. Who was I? Nothing but hired gun. An expendable brute. You needed him so in some way you could absolve your sin. Give yourself a fucking chance to save someone because you couldn't save him."

"Is that really what you think? Then you are just a brute. I never wanted him to marry Vanessa. Him, bloodless, passionless marry her? She deserves a life full of passion, a man who is her equal. A man who is not afraid to stand up to her, dominate her. She needs to be loved wildly, completely, madly. He can never do that. It's like a mating of a domestic tom cat to a lioness. I thought that was you. I still believe it is you but it can't be you now. She'll rip her own heart out before she is disloyal to him, loyalty is what she does and in it she is unbreakable however unhappy she is." Sir Malcolm's voice dropped, he seemed tired after his tirade.

"She's unhappy? I thought, I mean she seems so, content."

His laugh was harsh. "She is a master of deception. You see what she wants you do see. But you don't see her as I do. See her when she thinks she is alone, unobserved. That is her true self. Yes she is pleased because she has made him happy. But she will never be happy with him. She loves him because he needs her and she needs to be needed but she will never be in love with him. But enough of this Mr. Chandler we will not speak of this matter again. I have called you here on an entirely different matter. I am, as you see currently indisposed and therefore need a man such as you, a man I can trust to carry out certain tasks for me. These tasks will keep you busy, earn you the money I suspect you will need soon and also," and here his smile turned cruel, "give you the reasons you need to see her. You will be able to wallow in your self-inflicted pain that you seem to need. But I warn you, hurt her again and you will wish to Christ your father's money had never reached far enough to save you from the gallows. Leave now, but come back tomorrow as midday and bring your guns."


	4. Chapter 4

His hand dug deeper into the thick flesh of the man's throat and he could feel the outline of the windpipe which with only the slightest increase of pressure would crush the life out of him. He stopped just short as Sir Malcolm's instructions had been clear, frighten the shit out of him so he'd do the job he'd been employed to do but don't kill him. Part of him enjoyed the terror and pain he was inflicting; in some sick way it cut through the numbness that still infected him – he had found little in the past few months that gave him any pleasure besides causing others pain.

Even sex was nothing more than a function to exacerbate some of the pent up pressure and frustration that built up inside him at the situation he found herself in. The previous night he'd found a whore that in some sad way reminded him of Vanessa although her delicate frame and black hair had more to do with malnutrition and hair dye than any natural causes. On getting her back to his rooms though he could hardly bear to look at her let alone allow himself to take her and had pushed her firmly but gently to her knees to pleasure him with her mouth something he could never imagine Vanessa doing and he couldn't bear to associate a woman like that with his image of her. As her lips and the warm, wet cavern of her mouth worked the length of his shaft he let his mind wander torturing himself with every sight of her he'd had since that terrible morning he'd tried to violate her. She'd been right, Sir Malcolm had insisted on his continued presence at the house and he frequently found himself in close proximity to her. Although the distain that had radiated from every cell on that dreadful morning was still at times present, she seemed to have thawed slightly towards him as the weeks had passed although her demeanour could never be called more than cool. He watched her intently noting changes in her, particularly in her clothes now being of lighter hues than previous, although he felt that they didn't always seem to sit comfortably on her shoulders.

He observed her surreptitiously trying to find any evidence of the unhappiness that Sir Malcolm had spoken about but she was a mistress of detachment and he could ascertain nothing other than a kind of contentment in the way she carried herself, particularly when her husband was around. Her husband. That term tore at the scabs that formed over the abrasions that covered his hurts and opened them not as the searing pain he still longed for but as dull ache that lingered continuously at the back of his senses. The sight of them together was intolerable and when Victor touched her he had to fight down the urge to rip his hand off. Luckily he was not of a demonstrative nature and she seemed not to encourage physical contact although the thought of them together, alone in their bedroom still haunted him. It was an image of her thrown down against white pillows her hair tousled, her lips red and curved in a smile of welcome and eyes dark with passion that brought him finally to a climax and he spent his seed with a guttural moan into the willing mouth he'd paid for.

The face in front of him was turning purple, the eyes bulging out of their sockets, feet kicking uselessly trying to gain purchase on the wall that Ethan had him suspended against. A strangled sound tore from the thug's lips and Ethan shook him harder until he could almost hear his teeth rattle.

"Find him quickly because if I have to come looking for you again I'll tear your fucking throat out with my teeth. You've got three days. Fail to come up with an address and you're a dead man." He released the man who fell to the floor gasping for breath, hatred and fear coming off him in waves. He turned his back half hoping his victim would make a miraculous recovery and attack him from the rear, giving him a reason to kick seven barrels of hell out of him and to really inflict some damage, but he lay there useless.

As he walked away out of the alley, he could hardly recognise himself. He was no better than the thugs and criminals that Sir Malcolm had him intimidate to gain the information he seemed so desperate to glean although his primary purpose was not one he shared with him. He did not care about the older man's motives and although occasionally the mindlessness violence of the acts he committed prickled at his conscious, this was infrequent though and as time went on they worried him less. They provided for him a sense of purpose of worth, financial security and an excuse to at times be within the same house if not room as her.

He knew Sir Malcolm was waiting for an update but he found his feet taking him in a different direction from the house in Grandage Place where he was expected. He knew he shouldn't go there but he could not help it and he quickened his stride trying to beat the gathering gloom of night and the down pour that threatened. He felt drawn there because there he could watch her unobserved and without her knowledge. He'd been going for weeks, ever since he'd overheard her discussing her work with Sir Malcolm. He returned night after night to the abandoned warehouses under the railway bridge that housed the poor, the sick and the desperate never entering the confines but standing in the shadows to watch her exit that place where she moved amongst the most needy, offering food and succour. It was there that he could watch her when for those moments after she emerged, she seemed as she had been before, the careful constricts that she clothed herself in when he was near stripped away. Her warmth and humanity laid bare. It was there he could truly see the woman that he loved and not the stone idol that she metamorphosed into on laying her eyes upon him.

The first fat and cold drops of rain began hammering down just as he got to the usual doorway where he secreted himself that had a full view of the doorway she used as her exit from that place of despair. He was only just in time. She stopped just under the edge of the arch removing from her pale face the cloth that she'd tied around her mouth that provided some protection from the diseases she subjected herself to. As usual his anger at Victor not taking more care of her, not stopping her in her reckless endeavours surfaced but he knew he was being unfair. What man could stand against her and her want? Not him or Sir Malcolm had manged so how the bloodless doctor, her supposed husband would manage was laughable. Even from the distance between them he could see the strain on her face, the lines of fatigue sharpening her beauty even more. He knew he only had seconds before the carriage would arrive to whisk her way home and the next time he saw her she would have donned her frozen armour.

His eyes raked over her like a starving man both relishing the closeness but despairing at the distance, aching for one touch, for just a brush of sleeve or skirt against him to allow him to feel something. But the time stretched on he realised that the carriage had not come. He could see her scanning the street looking both left and right her body tense, listening for any sign of the transport that had never let her down before. The rain was thrashing down now relentless in its down pour. He could see her weighing up her possibilities before she stepped out into the rain just as he moved almost involuntarily towards her.

It was in that second that her eyes found his and he swore he saw a flash of something he could only describe as relief in their blue depths although she made no further step towards him standing in the deluge her clothes becoming quickly plastered to her form. In less than ten steps he was in front of her and all he could think was how standing in the flood, she seemed so honest, so real like that night on the moor. Quickly and without speaking his stripped his long coat off him draping it round her offering her some protection. One hand raised to grip it closer to her at the neck and the other she slipped into his hand which somehow, although he did not remember why, he'd held out to her. The shock of her icy skin against his spurred him into conscious thought because without it he might have just stood and gazed at her.

"My rooms are close, you can dry yourself there and then I'll find you a cab to take you home."

She returned his gaze looking deep into his eyes that he thought would be almost invisible in the gloom but seemed to accept the offer with a slight nod of her head although her face remained in inscrutable.

The journey back to his rooms along the rain drenched streets took only minutes and yet he savoured every second trying desperately to engrain it into his psyche so that he could relive it in the lonely hours of the night when her image haunted him the most. He was shocked at how easily she'd accepted his help and his hand, how it appeared she'd almost know he was there and also at the change in her demeanour. It was as if the rain that beat down upon them in some way was in its deluge washing their relationship clean, renewing it returning it to some semblance of the purity he'd always sensed when they'd been together before he'd departed. He barely felt the freezing water permeating his clothes that quickly became soaked focussed as he was on the feeling of the flesh of her hand in his, warmed and protected within the grip of his fingers. The way although so small, it seemed to fill the entire space as if it belonged there and the sensations he derived from it being there, the trust she seemed to show him made his heart bleed and pain blossom through him like bullet. At last the sensation of pure and utter pain that he had so longed for and it almost overwhelmed him in its fresh sharpness like a newly wetted blade.

She dropped his hand as he got to the door unlocking it quickly and stepped aside to usher her in. He felt her hesitation as her eyes flicked through the open door to the bed that could be seen, unmade in the corner.

"Go in and get dry there's clean towels in the chest by the bed. I'll got out and find a cab and wait with it until you're ready to come down. I won't come in. I understand…."

She turned her eyes towards him and the look he saw there silenced what he was going to say, in fact in that moment he completely forgot what had been hovering on his lips only seconds before. Her eyelashes were spiky with damp framing the sapphire blue that radiated with what he could only describe as trust and a lack of concern at being back in the place where he'd so nearly ruined any hope of her ever feeling safe with him again. She walked past him hanging his coat over a chair and then moved to the chest to retrieve the towels that he thanked God were freshly laundered. She returned to him and handed him one before wrapping another around her shoulders. She moved then to the small table and sat at the chair where she proceeded to unpin her hair.

Quickly despite dripping rivulets of water all over the floor he moved to build a fire in the grate the air in the room making his wet clothes feel frozen against his skin. Deftly he got the flames burning and then stripped off his jacket, waistcoat and shirt leaving his undershirt that had missed the worst of the soaking and turned to find her shivering, her arms wrapped around her torso, her hair only half unpinned. He could see her pallor was deathly white and her lips tinged with blue the shuddering wracking her body her eyes closed.

"Vanessa, come to the fire you're gonna freeze over there darlin'." The endearment slipped from his lips without him thinking but she didn't react only shook her head the shivering increasing.

He saw her open her lips but no sound came out only the chattering of her teeth she seemed unable to move.

In desperation at her state he strode over to her not caring how she reacted he had to get her warm, get her close to the fire and if she wouldn't move he'd bloody well move her. He swept her up into his arms, her gasp audible over the clash of her teeth although she didn't have time to physically react as he immediately placed her onto the mat as near to the fire as he could. The feeling of her form against his sent another knife of blissful pain through into his soul and he could hardly bear to lift his hands off her but knew he must. As the heat swept over her she shivered even more uncontrollably. Her clothes were wet but not soaked having been shielded in part by his overcoat but her hair that had been uncovered was a sodden mass.

He moved his hands into the dark mass and began to finish unpinning the heavy curls. He felt her start at the intimacy of his touch on her hair but he brooked no decent and without thinking he shushed her quiet, pulling the pins free so the whole amount fell onto the towel that covered her shoulders but he knew it would only drip making her wetter and colder. Rapidly he moved to the back to the chest to retrieve another towel. Then kneeling behind her he began to rub her raven curls squeezing the water out of them as the heat from the fire now burning brightly and with a more intense heat, bathed them both in its blissful warmth.

He could feel her so close to him, the initial tension both from the coldness and possibly his closeness under the rhythmic rubbing of her hair seem to melt out of her form and she relaxed, the chattering of her teeth and shaking of her body ceasing as continued to dry her hair.

"Thank you Mr Chandler." They were the first words she'd spoken and they seemed to punctuate the silence in the room, her husky tones turning the atmosphere warmer just as the fire in the grate warmed the air around them.

"You're welcome, Mrs Frankenstein." And he had to swallow the bile down that rose in his craw at giving sound to that name that in the past months he'd come to despise. His hands lifted the heavy fall away from her shoulders and began to dry the underside. Her hair felt almost alive in his hands, thick, rich full of life and satin smooth. In his mind's eye he imagined what it would be like to lie curtained in its richness, her face hovering over his her eyes full of unbridled passion. To run his fingers through it in affection, to plunge his hands deep into it to grasp her head, to bring her mouth to his but he quashed the thoughts as he felt his body respond to the images in his head and the woman just inches in front of him. Pain seared through him then at her closeness but also at her continued inaccessibility.

He felt her relax further her body a hair's breadth away from his. If she'd had lent back she would have rested against his chest but she remained agonisingly close but not touching although he could feel the warmth coming off her skin. The silence again stretched out between them. He was scared that she would move or ask him to since the worst of the wetness was gone from her hair though he continued to rub it with the towel just to have an excuse to touch her.

"I'm surprised that you are allowing me to do this after…." His voice petered out to nothing as for a moment he saw the tension form in her shoulders but only for a second and then she relaxed back.

"Your presence is no threat to me Ethan. You know that of which I am capable and I know that you are aware that I meant what I said, if you touch me again without my willingness I will destroy you. You were never a fool although your actions of late have painted a different picture." Her voice was soft and her tone too and he wondered if she mocked him.

"I'm sorry Vanessa. For everything."

She laughed then quietly but it contained no humour and behind it he felt her pain thick and dark.

"I know, but what is done is done and cannot be undone by any hand."

She turned then to face him and he sunk back down on his heels so they were almost level. With the firelight behind her, her face was in shadow and he could not ascertain the subtle nuances that he knew would cross her face.

"I wonder if what happened will turn out to be a blessing or a curse, whether one day we will look back at the choices we made and understand that our hand was forced. That just maybe if we'd been brave enough and we'd know that no other could be hurt if our actions would be different to those we allow ourselves."

Her voice had shrunk to almost a whisper barely discernible over the crackle of the fire and he leant closer in. It almost felt in those moments that they were the only people left alive and he watched in wonder as her hand lifted and began to close the gap between them her fingers reaching out towards his cheek.

"Mrs. Frankenstein. Madam are you there?" The voice was rough and accompanied by a harsh banging against the door. The mood was broken and Ethan felt the beast inside of him howl in anguish at the loss of that moment, the feel of her hand against his skin stolen away.

She jumped up but left him to open the door that he flung open barely trusting himself not to attack the intruder who'd imposed his presence on his single moment of true happiness in month.

The figure before him he recognised at the servant Bennet he glared at him without thinking and saw the man step back wariness flashing in his eyes.

Vanessa stepped forward, "Bennet where were you? Mr. Chandler had to rescue me from the most terrible down pour. I've been sheltering here trying to dry off. How did you know I was here?"

"I'm sorry Madam, the axil broke on the carriage, I've come by cab to fetch you. Sir Malcolm wondered if you'd be here since it is close to your work. He also wants to see you Sir." The man turned to Ethan noting his state of undress and then slipped past to look into the room, the unmade bed, the towels on the floor by the fire, the handful of hair pins scattered on the rug and a type of understanding blossoming in his gaze as he turned back to look back at them.

"He demands that you come now, as does your husband Madam."


	5. Chapter 5

The fire burned brightly in the grate but its warmth and light did little to lighten his mood as he sat in the darkest corner of the drawing room of Grandage Place staring though the slightly ajar door into the hall. His third whiskey of the past half an hour was clutched in his hand and he had to fight the impulse to throw it back as he'd done the previous two. The sounds of the house were muted, the silence oppressive and he felt increasing cut off from humanity not that he had any wish to be social. He brooded knowing he should leave the house to return to his lodgings where he could privately drink himself into oblivion and to save himself the sight that he dreaded and yet longed in his sickness to see. But the strength to do so alluded him and he knew that he could not leave until he'd wounded his soul upon the sight of her. The sight of her returning from dinner smiling, happy and secure in the affection of another, the man she called her husband. The man who had the right to escort her, to take her hand, to kiss her lips, to lay her down in their marital bed and love her in every way it was possible for a man to love a woman. The right denied him. The right that he walked away from and which sawed like a blunted blade grating, shredding his soul.

His memory returned to that night of the downpour in front of his fire, his hands in the silk of her hair, her body a mere hairs breadth from his, her voice soft and full it seemed of unspoken words and wants. Christ he relived those moments a thousand times a day constantly mulling over what might have happened if instead of being interrupted her hand had reached his face. How her fingers would have felt against his skin moving along his jaw line cupping his cheek. And then the imagining of her eye's darkening, her mouth opening as her breath quickened. How she'd pull the plushness of her lower lip into her mouth her body leaning forward before….

The banging of the front door destroyed the image he'd so carefully constructed and he stiffened, girding himself to face the happy couple to watch them in their domestic bliss his ears straining to hear their conversation, the shared endearments, the private talk of newlyweds still in the honeymoon period. But he quickly realised that only one person had entered the house and the light tread informed him that Vanessa had returned from her evening alone. He knew Bennet was upstairs helping Sir Malcolm ready himself for bed and that if she entered the room as she was want to do, they would be effectively alone for the first time since that night.

He'd seen her, of course but always in the company of others. He was desperate to talk to her about what had passed between them to somehow recapture just a glimpse of what he thought he'd seen, felt from her as she'd sat in front of his fire on that rain swept evening. Her manner had seemed to warm towards him since that night, she would at least remain in a room that he was in rather than leave immediately which had been the pattern of their existence previous to that encounter.

He heard her stop, the rustle of her coat being removed and listened intently to see if she would climb the stairs for the night sending a silent prayer skyward that she would decide to come into the drawing room for a nightcap or maybe a smoke. He lacked the courage to go out into the hall to face her rejection or to feel that he'd forced her hand in anyway. He wanted her to decide to be on her own again with him rather than coerce her into being there.

Finally after what seemed to his impatient brain an eternity he saw her shape through the gap in the door and after pushing it wider she walked through still carrying her coat a slight frown etched onto her beautiful face. Greedily he swept his eyes over her, taking in the form fitting, deep green evening dress cut in a way to leave her graceful shoulders bare the merest hint of the top of her breasts showing, pushed high by the clinch of her corset. As always her slender arms were un-gloved, the only jewellery that adorned her was her simple gold crucifix and the wedding band that seemed as ugly to him as a brand against the purity of her skin.

She laid her coat along the back of the sofa and then drifted over to the sideboard to open the small, silver box and retrieve one of her cigarettes. He was certain that he remained unseen and she made no reaction to his presence until, without turning, he heard her say,

"I don't suppose Mr. Chandler that you have the means to light this about your person?"

He leapt from his seat, moving towards her his hand fumbling in his pocket to remove the lighter he knew, she knew he always carried. As he closed the gap he watched for the almost imperceptible stiffening of her stance which had become in the weeks since his return a characteristic of their relationship but in fact she seemed to relax as he came closer. He flipped the top off the brass lighter sparking the wheel and held it out the flame highlighting the sharp edges of her face and casting shadows into the hollows of her cheekbones. She leaned forward folding her hand around his to steady the lighter and inhaled the paper catching light. He watched as she drew the vapours deep into her lungs her eyes closing for an instant relishing the soporific effect and he could almost see the relaxation flood through her. Her eyes opened, the blue lacking her usual clarity and her lips curled into slight smile. She drifted past him and sat on the sofa.

"Would you join me Mr Chandler, if you don't have anywhere else to be? I'd appreciate the company for a while." Her voice was soft and there was an edge to it which for a moment he failed to recognise but as he joined her, and she passed him the smoking cylinder he thought he saw a trace of what he could only describe as sadness flicker over her face. He had to fight down the immediate response to take her in his arms, to brush his thumbs over the edges of her face. To feel the bone sharp under the silk of her skin, to watch the inevitable colouring of the ivory to pink at the rasp of the callouses on the pads of his fingers. To smooth away her pain and inflict sever pain on the being who'd caused her sadness.

They sat for a moment in silence passing the cigarette between them. She'd kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up on the sofa under her skirts resting her chin on her knees her arms wrapped around her legs. He watched her for a moment, it was almost as if he wasn't there and he didn't know whether to rejoice in what could be construed at her comfortableness at his presence or despair at her lack of care that the impropriety of the way she was sitting seemed to suggest.

"Did you have a good evening?" The silence had become uncomfortable for him although she did not seem to find it so, and although he did not really want to talk about her evening with her husband he needed to find out why she'd returned alone. Whether the unthinking bastard had caused her obvious upset, to add yet another reason to the ever growing list of reasons to hate him despite most of them being of his own imagining and making and not Victor's.

She laughed and reached over to take the cigarette from him, her fingers brushing his in her seeming impatience and inhaled deeply.

"It was very pleasant up until Victor was called away. There was an urgent case at the hospital and the doctor who was on call couldn't be found. Knowing him he is drowning his ineptitude at the local pub or his lust in the arms of some whore."

His own conscious prickled at her last statement remembering his recent encounter with the raven haired prostitute fuelled in part by his own need to feel like a man, a man that could satisfy a woman like her.

"And he left you at the restaurant?" He knew his voice sounded accusatory but he couldn't help it. The idea of her being left for any reason, that something else could be more important than spending time in her company was abhorrent to him. The fact that he had done worse was pushed to the back of his conscience, he needed reasons to keep the hatred of her situation alive.

Her eyes flicked towards him for a second and a slight frown creased her forehead in between her brows. His hand instinctively twitched to brush it away with his thumb.

A quite laugh bubbled out of her throat but he could tell it was forced, the sound harsh and unnatural to him, who'd been one of the very few people ever to hear her laugh honestly.

"Do not be so hard on him Mr Chandler. He has little choice. He is as incumbent to duty as we ourselves are. No, he saw me home but I doubt if he will return tonight. Medicine is a tempting mistress I have found and she is difficult to compete with."

It was then he felt her hand upon his so unexpected that without thinking he flinched, but she did not remove it only exerted a slight pressure, her thumb brushing lightly over the back of it.

"Do not hate him. He does not deserve your hatred. You owe him more than anyone Ethan. And although you know the truth, in this you choose to obscure it with loathing. You focus on him to move the actual target away from its true focus, the fact that you hate yourself and what you have done. The fact that your act of what you construed as selflessness, was in fact pure selfishness and through it we all have suffered, and continue to suffer. You make your choices my….." she hesitated for a second and then continued, "Mr. Chandler and we all live with them."

He gazed into her eyes and behind the carefully constructed façade saw for the first time grief and just the hint of something else until she slammed up the barriers, the blue becoming cold and her hand was removed from his which felt like a bereavement.

"I must thank you for your company Mr. Chandler but must suggest that you now return to you home for proprieties sake. I understand that Sir Malcolm has need of your services again tomorrow, so I wish you good night." Her voice and smile was polite and she moved from the sofa in a fluid movement to place herself before the fire her back a brick wall of solitude and rejection.

He had nowhere to go but to leave and he stood aching for the easy companionship that had been given so unexpectedly and then again torn away. He retrieved his coat and hat from the chair he'd vacated upon her arrival and walked towards to door.

At the last minute, as he reached the parlour door, he turned back to look at her. The long line of her back, the wisp of curls dark against the whiteness of the nape of her elegant neck and it was in that moment he truly understood what he had done and the pain he'd so longed for crashed like a storm upon him, crushing him with such a force that he understood pure suffering. But he could do nothing; he was powerless against her, against it.

"Good night Mrs. Frankenstein."

"Mr. Chandler."

Pulling his coat on he crossed the hall and flung open the door pulling into his lungs the cold of the night air enjoying the burn and then stepped out into the darkness walking quickly to put distance between him and the unutterable pain that knifed through him when near her.

"Ethan."

Her voice rang out and he turned to see her framed against the doorway. His heart leapt for a moment but it was short lived as he saw in her hand the dull gleam of brass. His lighter.

He walked back to retrieve it forcing his mouth into a smile of thanks, but just as he reached her he felt a sudden change in the atmosphere and a harsh tone rang out.

"Chandler. Heard you were looking for me. Well here I am you bastard."

He turned to see the dull sheen of metal raised and with horror realised that the gun was pointed away from him, directly at Vanessa.

As the shot rang out in the darkness he threw himself forward. The bullet hit him with such force that for a moment the shock deadened the pain and then blossomed in his chest pure and sharp as a dagger. As he fell her heard her cry out his name, the sound of pure desperation and felt his body connect with hers, her arms going round him as them both collapsed to the floor. As darkness began to steal his sight and numbness seeped through him he watched the crimson of his wound stain the fabric of her dress and a river of tears pouring from the endless blue of her eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

Over and over he moves and each time he is just too late. Too late to save her, too late to stop the thud of the bullet into the softness of her body. Her harsh intake of breath resonating in his ears. He feels before he actually sees her fall, the blood blooming against the dark satin of her dress turning it black in the moonlight. Her eyes blaze for a moment iridescent in their blueness straight into his trying to tell him something before they fade to nothing and he holds her, just a limp shell and howls his agony into the night sky, desolate he never got to tell her the truth. Then the hands are back pulling at him trying to take her away, trying to keep her from him but he will not let them, he will not let go again, he will not leave her again, he will never leave her again. He fights against them thrashing wildly but his strength is failing, pain consumes him, his chest is on fire and then the hands change. Become softer but more insistent more dominant and then a voice. Harsh and uncompromising but like it is coming from another time, another place.

"Victor, Victor we're losing him. Victor now, do something now, please." And then closer, a murmur so intimate directed at him, a voice softer now full of an emotion he can hardly believe but it's so real, so true. "Ethan hold on. You can't die, you've got to hold on my love. I won't let you leave me. Please Ethan don't leave me again. Not again."

He tries to speak, to find her in the darkness that he can't seem to break free of, to touch her but he can't reach out and then an intrusion, the stab of metal into his arm and the rush of drugs that sends him spiralling down, further and further away from her and there is nothing he can do but leave her. Leave her again.

He didn't remember waking or even realising he was awake. The slip into consciousness was one of such subtly that he couldn't really put his finger on when it had happened. He was aware of grey light filtering in through his eyelids that it seemed that he couldn't remember how to open. His body felt heavy, devoid of feeling and yet restricted. As his awareness slowly seeped back he became aware of a presence with him and then fractures of memories began to coalesce. Him standing at the threshold of a door. The gleam of a dull brass lighter in the white, delicate hand of a woman and then a gunshot ringing out in the cold, clear air and pain, white hot pain searing thorough him.

"Vanessa!" The name tore from him and he struggled to sit up in a suddenly familiar bed his eyes tearing open to see a room he'd never thought he'd see again, the room he'd called his own for a few short weeks before the series of events that started this hideous turn of events. A spasm of pain tore through him he could hardly take the breath into his burning lungs. He felt he was drowning in it, fighting against it as it spread through his frame. Suddenly the presence he's sensed was there leaning over him. But it was not the one he expected or hoped for. Eyes of watery grey, red rimmed and shadowed with deep purple bruises gazed at him with what could only be described as professional interest. They moved away and he heard the clink of glass and then seconds later the brush of cold metal against the inside of him arm.

"Wait, Doc, wait. Don't. No drugs, please."

To his relief the needle was removed and Victor Frankenstein's fine features swam into sight again.

"Ethan. Christ I was wondering if you were ever going to wake. We almost lost you so many times I'm not quite sure how you survived it but something seemed to keep you going. I swear you died two or three times but then, suddenly your heart would start beating again. You're a bloody medical miracle." His face broke into something that resembled a smile tinged with what could only be described as irritation. "So do you remember what happened?"

His mind cast back to that night and what he could remember before the bullet tore into him and suddenly he remembered crashing into a soft body and blood staining deep, green satin.

"Vanessa is she okay? She wasn't hit, hurt? Where is she? I thought she was here, I thought I heard her." He could feel the panic rising in him. Was this why Victor looked so tired was he nursing her too, was the nightmare that haunted him true? Had she taken the bullet with him? Was she dead? He struggled again to sit but the tightness in his chest was too much and he shrunk onto the mattress wracked with pain.

Victor's forehead creased and a shadow passed over his face but his voice seemed calm and unruffled.

"No, no she was fine. Suffered a few bruises from you falling into her when you fell but no the bullet that hit you didn't hurt her at all. To be honest I think it was her that kept you going. She was like something possessed. I got home just after it happened and somehow she'd managed to drag you into the hall and had staunched the worst of the bleeding. She's sat with you constantly since it happened praying and whispering to you. If I believed in such things I'd say she called you back. She defied you to die. She's refused to leave your side for the last two weeks. An hour ago I finally persuaded her to go to her room for a rest." For a moment his face twisted and the words that fell from his lips seemed shadowed by an faintly veiled undertone of something that for a moment Ethan could not put his finger on.

"There seems to be some connection between you. She would speak and even though you were full of drugs and without any semblance of life you'd seem to respond. Her voice, even her coming into the room for the moments she had to leave would seem to drag you back from wherever you'd gone." His laugh sounded bitter and it suddenly became clear and for just a moment he revelled in it. That tone so measured, so careful was an attempt at masking bitter and barely concealed jealousy. But at that moment he suddenly empathised with the man who so long in his eyes had been the obstruction regarding his want. The words Vanessa had said just before she'd sent him away that night rang in his ears, an unwanted but poignant echo.

"Do not hate him. He does not deserve your hatred. You owe him more than anyone Ethan. And although you know the truth, in this you choose to obscure it with loathing."

Guilt flooded through him as the truth of those words struck home. He was indeed beholdent to the pale, thin man who sat by his side. Not just for his skills, which however much he passed that success onto his wife, surely had been the main reason for his continued life but for using those skills to heal and not to harm. How easy it would have been for his to allow his rival, because surely that was now how he viewed him, to slip away from life by the imbuing into his veins of just a little too much of the drugs that had eased the worst of his pain. To end the suffering of his body that threatened his peace and his own soul. To irrevocably keep the woman he'd won as solely his. As he gazed into the eyes of the man who had saved his life he wondered if he could ever be that magnanimous but knew in his soul that he could not. Had the tables been turned he would have killed, not cured.

The silence stretched uncomfortably between then and it was Ethan who was the first to drop his gaze looking down at his chest naked apart from a tight swathing of bandages. He trailed his hand over the linen to try and feel through the covering the site the bullet had entered and finally just above his left pectoral muscle found a tender spot.

Victor's light tone broke through his musing, "You were lucky it entered where it did. An inch or two lower and to the right and you would have been beyond my skill. Yes an inch or two was all it would have taken….." .

Ethan looked up as the doctor's voice faded and in those pale grey eyes before they were quickly dropped he swore he saw a gleam of what he could only describe as mild regret and for the first time in his relationship with the man standing in front of him he felt the cold slice of fear piece his heart. For a moment he considered confronting him with this knowledge, calling him out, forcing the issue. To instigate the conversation that for him had been a canker in his soul but which for Victor was yet a graze that should now begin to fester raking deeper and deeper into his conscience becoming an unhealing harm. But the understanding of Victor's suspicion was all but obliterated at the opening of the bedroom door.

Framed in the doorway her pale dress seeming to glow softly in the weak sunlight that filtered thought the half opened curtains of the room, she stood. He could not see her face which was in shadow but he could feel the intensity of her gaze like a living tangible force against his skin directed straight into his flesh. His mouth went dry and in that moment there was nothing except them and the unspoken, unadmitted emotion. His fingers twisted into the sheets trying to still the trembling that ripped through him at the sight of her. Slowly she moved further into the room and he was able to make out her features tight with fatigue and concern but her eyes blazed iridescent with relief.

"Victor, Sir Malcolm has just woken but seems to be suffering some discomfort." At the sound of her voice his heart clenched but her eyes never left his and in them he saw the glitter of tears gathering in the winter blue.

"I'll go to him immediately my dear of course. As you can see Mr Chandler has awoken. Maybe you can sit with him and when I come back I'll further examine his injuries and discover how he is recuperating."

He barely noticed the doctor leaving the room, his eyes filled only by the sight of her. She stood immobile the fall and rise of her chest the only movement in the stillness until the sharp click of Sir Malcolm's door shutting down the hall seemed to awaken her. A strangled sob escaped her lips at the sound and she stumbled towards the bed. Without thinking he opened his arms and she fell into them her face buried against the linen that bound his chest and for a moment he was unsure if the pain he felt was physical from his wounds or the emotions that bubbled up inside of him at the feeling of her body finally against his. His arms wound around her shaking frame, his hands found the heavy satin of her hair and he felt the heat of her tears seep against his skin.

"Thank God, thank God. I thought I'd lost you. I thought you'd die and I'd never be able to tell you." Her voice was muffled against his body but the emotion in it was real and a sudden wild joy ran through him not only that she was unharmed and here in his arms but at the words that tumbled from her mouth.

"Tell me what Vanessa?" Although it made him feel bereaved to remove what he'd ached for for so long, gently he pushed her away from his body to look into her tear soaked face. Her hands fluttered up to his face her fingers pressing against his cheeks running over the roughness of his beard and brushing against his lips.

Her face mouth stretched into a smile but there was no ounce of joy in the upturn of her lips and her eyes were nothing but pits of despair as she whispered, "That I love you."

He thought for a moment that he'd misheard her that it was his want and need to hear the words that had formed the sound in his ears, but when her mouth lowered to his and he felt the softness of her lips against his flavoured with the salt of her tears that continued to flow as she pressed a kiss of infinite gentleness onto his mouth, he knew it was true.

Slowly she eased back but his hands found the back of her head and he pulled her back to his mouth welding his lips to hers trying in that touch of tenderness and passion to convey the abject apology that he knew he owed her for the pain he had caused her and begging for her forgiveness.

When they finally drew apart, her tears had stopped flowing but drops hung on the whiteness and cupping that face that haunted both his waking and sleeping hours he brushed his thumbs across her cheeks in the gesture that was so familiar that as the ache blossomed in him he saw the remembrance of it shadow her eyes where more tears welled.

"No darlin' no more tears please. I'm gonna be fine,"

The smile that didn't reach her eyes stretched her mouth again and he ached for the lack of joy. She sat back although her fingers found his hand, winding through his digits.

"I know that now Ethan. I know you'll recover your full strength due in part to Victor's skill and my art. But our troubles are far from over. Our suffering begins in earnest my love because now we add another's pain. You and I have lived with this affliction and we are strong, our past troubles have made us so. But Victor is not and what is to come, what must come will break him. I heard what he said to you and I recognise as I know you did the blossoming seed of suspicion. He will never admit it and possibly does not yet really know it himself but he will look for betrayal. I tried so hard to keep it hidden thinking his love for me would blind him, protect him from the truth. But my love for you and in part yours for me is a storm and what breeze of affection and purity can stand against it? I should have known, I did know and yet I allowed it to happen, or did nothing to stop it."

She tightened her grip on his hand her other returning to cup the side of his head. He closed his eyes reeling in the joy of her touch but pained by the truth of her words. If he'd had the physical strength he would have run from the house pulling her with him because he knew in that moment she would go, leave the half-life she'd built but it was impossible. He had neither the strength and as the image of Victor's pale face swam into his brain guilt slammed into him. What had Victor ever done but love and care for the woman he'd to recklessly abandoned. Without him God alone knows what Vanessa would have done in those months alone, where she would have found herself. Victor had offered her security, sanity in her world of horrors and all he'd ever done was add to them. He not only owed him his life but also the life of the woman whose hand he held but had little right to.

"We have to stop it Vanessa. We have to stop this now. We can't rip another life to pieces because we suffer. Victor is innocent. I see that now. He is the one who deserves happiness and we need to see to it that he gets it. We owe him our lives we are beholdent to him." He could feel her hand tighten on his and when he opened his eyes he saw her face bone white but her eyes full of bitter understanding and acceptance.

The thought of never being able to touch her again never feeling her pliant against him as she had just minutes before, never again to feel the silken touch of her mouth against his the taste of her lips cut through him searing it seemed his very flesh from his bones. In despair he raised her hand to his lips and placed a kiss into the very centre of her palm folding her fingers back over it as a keepsake.

Again she smiled and again all he could see in her eyes were loss and suffering, an exact mirror of his own. She stood then and he watched her seem to physically stiffen her resolve. Her armour was in place. She walked away but as she got to the door she stopped for a second and he heard in her voice a hollowness as empty as his own hope.

"To pain my love."


	7. Chapter 7

On crossing the threshold of his rude dwelling he barely supressed the urge to scream kicking the door behind him closed with such force it groaned in protest. How the fuck he'd got through the evening without disgracing himself he'd had no idea. The only thing he could put it down to was his love for the woman who'd sat opposite him for what must have been one of the longest and most painful evenings of his life. Sir Malcolm had insisted that he stay for dinner in celebration of his return to health and also his success in finally tracking down the whereabouts of a person in which Sir Malcolm was highly interested in. The food had been delicious, the wine a perfect complement to it and Sir Malcolm and the doctor had been on fine form the alcohol relaxing both their personalities and their tongues. A year past he would have revelled in the companionship, the company, the camaraderie but the evening had been tortuous.

Vanessa had looked exquisite dressed in a gown of deep wine red, tiny roses of the same colour nestled in her midnight hair that gleamed against the ivory of her skin in the subtle light of the dining room and later the drawing room. She'd been the perfect hostess, charming, smiling at the conversation and occasionally making comment. But her eyes had been constantly drawn to his as his had to hers and in them he saw not only the love for him so thinly veiled but also the very mirror of his own suffering. Constantly he had to tear his eyes away from hers so he didn't at best get lost in them or at worst stride over to her, take her in his arms and kiss the pain away, her husband and the fragile friendship they'd built be damned.

The jealousy that he'd seen the seed of in the young doctor the day he'd finally woken, had seemed to shrivel away in the further weeks he spend recuperating at Grandage Place. Victor had watched them from afar but still closely, but since Vanessa's confession of her feelings they had played the most careful of games. Although there had been small windows of opportunity for them to be alone they had taken no advantage of them always maintaining a level of decorum that was beyond suspicion. The joy he felt at the knowledge of her forgiveness and the love that shone from her eyes like a beacon when they were alone together was wracked with the kind of suffering he'd longed for in those months before. But now it was unbearable. To know that she loved him, wanted him and yet was still unassailable filled him with the kind of pain he previously could only imagine.

What was worse though was the respect and friendship for her husband that he could grudgingly not help feeling the longer he stayed in the house. His compassion, his skill, his care of Sir Malcolm and the obvious adoration he felt for Vanessa was all but tangible in everything he did and said. Previous to this, apart from the afternoon they'd spent in the cellar, him teaching Victor to shoot, their time together had been brief and at first often unwelcome, but his recuperation had forced them together. At first an uneasy companionship had grown up between them but quickly had slipped into friendship. Stories had been shared of past pleasures and pains, recommendations of poetry to read, discussion of events from the daily news had all built a new but deepening relationship. Sometimes Vanessa would join them and he could see her conflict a mirror now of his own. Although he knew that her love and need for him was paramount to her existence like the very air she breathed he saw her abiding love for the man she called husband and now he was able to understand and respect it. Ethan was her very soul and life's blood but Victor held a place in her heart.

And although it took him away from her presence, as soon as he was able, although disapproved by all at Grandage Place, he moved back to his rooms. Every time they were alone it became harder for him, especially as he gained his health not to pull her into his arms and meld his mouth to hers. He knew that she would not reject him, that she wanted physical evidence of his love as much as he did, but to put her into that position of betrayal was unacceptable. That first night, still in pain from his barely healed wound which was exacerbated by the lack of her presence he felt a depth of torture as yet unknown to him. The knowledge that she was so far away, that she would not be able to enter his room to bid him good night her soft, deep voice both a salve and scourge to his emotional agony her love burning in her eyes almost undid him. He spent the night staring into the darkness reliving every word, every look, every touch that had ever passed between them. But most of all he tried to recapture the feeling of her mouth on his. Once in rain soaked passion in the cottage on the moor and most recently in abject pain on a grey morning only weeks before at the acceptance of their fate. When finally he did sleep it was filled with dreams, flashes of her body wrapped around his in ecstasy only to be torn away again and again until he felt he would run mad.

And tonight in the aftermath of another evening where his friend would sleep by her side the pain was as cutting. In despair he reached for his cure and curse in the form of the bottle of cheap whiskey that sat on the small table where she'd once sat blue lipped and shivering, her soaking clothing moulded to her body attempting to unpin her hair. In desperation he couldn't even wait to find a glass bringing the bottle directly to his mouth loving and hating in equal measure the burn of the rough liquor even more pronounced by the fine liquors he'd consumed earlier that evening. The part of him that wanted to punish, flagellate himself screamed into his brain that this was all he deserved. Alone, with his blatant want of another man's wife, a coward drowning his sorrow and lust down the neck of a bottle. That by filling his body with such polluted filth it proved that he had no right to foul something as pure and binding as the vows made between a man and his wife; his friend and his wife. This thought rang so true that the next swig of the harsh liquid caused him to choke and in a fit of rage he flung the bottle against the far wall watching in with a mixture of horror and satisfaction as it exploded against the wall the whiskey staining the dirty wall covering further and filling the room with its noxious fumes.

He knew he was behaving irrationally the smashing of the bottle which would have given him some peace in drunken oblivion but he could do nothing else. His mind was racing and it took every ounce of strength not just to return to Grandage Place, confront Victor with the truth and demand that Vanessa came with him. But although the idea of it seemed the very answer to his pain he knew that it was nothing more than a fantasy. He could not make her choose, not that he didn't think he would evolve the victor but what it would do to her. Sir Malcolm had warned him months back of her loyalty and he could not test that even if it broke his, and ultimately her heart.

He had considered disappearing again. Walking away from the torture that her marriage caused but despite the undeniable pain it caused him every moment he was in her presence and unable to claim her the thought of being away from her any more than he had to be was an agony he knew he now was not strong enough to bare. That mixed with the pain of seeing her came with fleeting moments of pleasure. Only the previous day he'd arrived at the house and had entered though the kitchen since he was aware Bennet had been given an afternoon off and past familiarity had given him knowledge of where the back door key was hidden. He'd silently entered the drawing room hoping to help himself to a fortifying glass of Sir Malcolm's whiskey only to be confronted by the sight of Vanessa laying asleep on the sofa. She looked so utterly at peace and yet in that relaxed pose one arm flung over her head the other laying on her breast a small book clutched in her hand. His heart leapt as he recognised it as one of his. One that he'd thoughtlessly left when he'd walked out of this very house over a year before thinking never to see it or her again. The fact that she'd found it, kept it and read it in private; something of his, caused a glow to run though him. She looked like a goddess and he found himself drawn to her, a supplicant in worshipful adoration. Without thinking he knelt down at her side aching to touch her, to run his fingers over her skin to lay his mouth against hers and wake her with kisses. He could almost feel the shape of her mouth against his. Her sweet breath whispering against his lips, her thin arms full of the strength of passion winding round his neck. But sanity stopped him and the fear of branding her with the sin of adultery. But then suddenly he found himself staring into the endless blue of her eyes although he did not remember them opening. The smile that spread across that mouth he'd moments before longed to kiss almost broke his heart as at first it was one of pure and unutterable joy at the sight of him and then that shadowed, haunted look that came into her eyes as the whole agonising realisation crashed over her again and although her mouth was still curved, it was now a mockery of the emotion that he'd seen.

The fact that he'd wanted this pain was a sick joke. When he was in ignorance of her feelings yes he'd suffered and had wanted to more but the knowledge of her true feelings and what she now suffered was beyond anything he could have haver imagined or hoped to feel in his twisted sickness. Words spoken by his Mother came to haunt him. Beware what you wish for - and not for the first time in his life he berated himself for his lack of care of that gentle woman's wisdom. If only she were here she at least would offer some understanding if nothing else to his plight but she, as he had longed to, lay in the cold clay of his former home.

It was the brutal hopelessness of the situation that crashed through him, a wave of pain that was as unending and enduring as the sea itself. He had the means to stop it, to end it. His guns, as always sat loaded within his reach. How easy it would be to embrace the peace they offered. A final, terminal solution to all the pain. How many times had he picked them up, almost lovingly caressed their offer of oblivion but always something stopped him. That one tiny seed that prevented his cowardly exit: hope. Even now he still hoped that there was a way, that this whole seething mess would right itself, that there could be a happy ending. That maybe tomorrow an answer would present itself.

For a moment he closed this eyes to find her form again in the darkness to find the one and only thing that held him to this life. When he opened them again onto the shabby rooms he knew he'd gain no natural sleep but lacked the energy to leave them to find the liquid aid he needed. With purpose he laid and lit the fire in the grate, cleared the glass away moping the worst of the whiskey up and closed the curtains against the night. He eased himself into the shabby armchair in front of the fire to wait out the night with his memories and his pain for company.

Then almost imperceptibly there came a knock at the door.


	8. Chapter 8

For a moment he'd thought he'd imagined the sound. It was so faint, tentative that deep in thought as he was, he could have missed it. But the fact it had intruded on his contemplations suggested that it was somehow linked to them. And the last time there'd been an unexpected knocking at the door he'd opened it to her. The hope that she could be on the threshold, waiting for him, wanting him maybe having thrown caution to the wind was a pull he could not ignore. Whether for one night or for eternity, he was helpless against it. As he walked to the door part of him hoped it wouldn't be. The conflict of that which was surely to ensue as soon as she entered his rooms in this, the dead of night, with him, full of lust and longing. He could almost see the claret of her dress like a bloodstain on his floor and her body, skin gleaming like ivory twisted in his sheets.

He yanked on the handle and looked down into blue eyes but a pale copy of those he'd ached for but had been terrified to see.

"Victor? Christ man what are you doing here? Is everything alright? Is…," he paused fighting down his immediate response to ask about Vanessa, his guilt making the question almost a confession,"….Sir Malcolm okay and Vanessa?"

"They are both fine and as far as I know both asleep and do not know that I've gone." He smiled then but Ethan noticed that it did not reach his eyes. "I find myself in need of company, unable to rest, hence why I am here but I also need to talk." Ethan could sense something in the young doctor's presence, a conflict of sorts, the need for companionship and something else but it was fleeting and gone as Victor dropped his eyes towards the wooden floor boards of the hall.

"May I perhaps come in?" He asked after a couple of moments.

Ethan inwardly cursed himself for his lack of manners and threw open the door to allow the younger man to pass apologising for his rudeness, "I just wasn't expecting company."

He could only wonder at the unexpected visit, but part of him dreaded the explanation that surely was to come. Maybe he'd not been as subtle as he'd hoped and maybe his young friend had not been as drunk as he'd thought, he certainly seemed sober enough as he stood on the faded rug in front of the fire place where only weeks ago had sat his wife her sodden hair drying in his hands.

The silence lay like an embarrassment between them as Victor turned to stare at the liquor stained wall that slight smile still stretching his mouth.

"I'd offer you a drink doc but… I had a bit of an accident with the bottle. Anyway it was filthy gut rot." Ethan tried to keep his tone light desperate to break the desolate silence between them.

"Well Mr. Chandler, it is lucky perhaps that I took the opportunity to liberate this from Sir Malcolm's copious stores." and from the inside pocket of his great coat extracted a bottle of Sir Malcolm's finest brandy, the same as they'd been drinking earlier. The sight of the rich, tawny liquid was a temptation too far. Ethan knew he should be careful but craved the numbness that would come in imbruing decent liquor.

Quickly he found a couple of clean glasses and went to sit in the armchair, Victor having taken the settle. However he was stopped by the flash of irritation that crossed the young doctor's face and his words confirmed what he'd seen.

"Not very conducive to sharing a bottle if you're going to sit all the way over there. We'll be forever up and down. Why don't you sit here next to me then at least we can put the bottle in easy reach of both of us?" He smiled then and Ethan noticed something that had never struck him before how a true smile such as the one that graced his face now made him look younger. Took away the tight look of serious professionalism that so often lined his visage. In that smile he noticed how attractive he was, how a woman or a man might succumb to his charms. He was no novice when it came to dalliance with his own sex. Lust and want was something that Ethan Chandler had found in both men and women and had actively pursued in the past. He hesitated for a moment. Was the young doctor making a seductive play albeit a clumsy one? He'd never seen any indication before of anything other than someone interested in friendship, the male companionship that had always seemed to allude the younger man. He quickly pushed the idea away. Victor was an innocent and probably had no knowledge or idea of the act of love between two men, let alone long for it or suggest it. Of course, it made sense to sit together to share the drink. Surely his mind full of lustful thoughts of this man's wife had somewhat stained his clear view. Christ he was seeing sin in the simplest of suggestions.

He joined Victor without further thought his larger bulk filling the majority of the space on the settle but the young doctor was slight. Silently he filled their glasses and then raised his to his young friend.

"To…?"

"To love." Victor intoned and they both tossed back the liquid. Ethan felt the welcome mellow warmth flood through him only present in spirits of quality so different from the harsh burn of the whiskey he'd smashed against the wall earlier. In silence he filled their glasses again and both drank deeply and for a few minutes the two men sat in silence staring in the fire alone with their thoughts.

"I can't make her happy." The words cut through Ethan's train of thoughts like a brand and he tore his eyes from the flames to stare at the man sitting next to him clutching a glass, his knuckles starkly white against the glass.

"What? What ya mean?" He knew it was a stupid question but it tore out of his mouth before he could catch it.

"Vanessa. I can't make her happy. Christ Ethan I've tried but I'm not enough of a man, I'm not the man she wants or deserves."

Ethan felt his stomach swoop and he didn't know if it was with joy or dread. Did Victor know about his and Vanessa's feelings for each other? Had he noticed? He could hardly been surprised, the intellect of the young man was vast although at times his common sense at times was frighteningly lacking, or had he underestimated him in this as well as in other things?

"Why do you think that doc? She loves you, surely you can see that? For Christ sake man you're the best of us."

The laugh that tore from the younger man's mouth was bleak and full of self-hatred.

"Then why can't I make love to her? Why do we… have we slept separately for God alone knows how long if that's the truth?"

Ethan felt his body go cold and a sheen of guilty sweat bead under his shirt. Was this the confrontation he'd been half longing for and half dreading? Was it now that he could divest his pain, step into the light, release them all from the half-life they'd been living?

"God I love her Ethan. Who wouldn't? I mean she's beautiful, everything a man could ever want. Intelligent, passionate, kind and it's not her fault. She's never denied me but I just can't. I look at her and I…." his voice faded then. He was sitting hunched over his head bowed but he raised it and looked straight into Ethan's eyes.

What he saw there almost floored him. The cool, grey blue eyes of the doctor were hot with desire and that desire was directed straight at him. His breath caught in his throat. It was so unexpected. Never in a million years would he have ever thought that this young man of science could ever long for more than what was considered by the majority what was natural. That his tastes and desires varied from what he'd always supposed was intriguing to say the least. Why had he never seen it? Surely this was something that although only just admitted had been evident before? And the fact that his want was directed at him was not, he was surprised to find unwelcome. Even though they had built a friendship he'd never considered it could be anything beyond that, had never wanted more but now looking into those eyes full of previously undisclosed want, he felt his own body respond.

Before he could do anything the younger man had moved towards him grasping his shirt front and clumsily his mouth found his.


	9. Chapter 9

As quietly as he could he shut the door so as not to wake the man curled up in his bed and leaned up against the scarred wood desperately trying to get his thoughts and desires into some kind of order. He could still feel the press of those full lips against his. The faint prickle of stubble on their edges as they cleaved to his. The tentative sweep of the tip of a tongue as the kiss had deepened into something more than just exploratory as his mind and body replayed the scene between him and the young doctor.

Ethan had felt himself get lost in the sensation of that beautiful mouth nipping at his, of the hard, young body pressing against him, the inquisitive hands roaming over his chest. His own fingers had sunk into the short, crisp slightly curled hair at the nape of the long white column of his neck. Without conscious thought he'd angled that head to better suckle at the lips mashed against his own, had forced his tongue into the warm cavern of his friend's mouth making it his. God he had wanted him then, wanted to push that lithe, pliant body back against the settle. To strip the layers of his clothes down to the purity of his skin. To lay claim to that skin with his mouth and his fingers. To taste the musk of his sex as he swallowed him down to the hilt and to bring him to sweet, shuddering climax.

A groan had torn from his mouth as he felt a gentle but ever emboldened palm rubbing against his erection that had been, since before the kiss, straining in his pants. He knew that only a layer of cloth and buttons lay between the silken stroke of that hand against his swollen cock and it was that knowledge that had finally broken through the madness that had come over him.

Without warning he shoved the young doctor back, away from his aroused body and stood up moving back towards the fire place. Victor looked deliciously mussed. His shirt untucked and half open allowing a glimpse of pale skin, his mouth swollen and red his own trousers showing ample evidence of his own want, his eyes glowing with a feral need that almost had him back at him.

'Victor wait, wait a minute." He held his hand out as the doctor had started too to stand. He knew that if he touched him again he might not be able to resist his innocent and yet knowing lure. He grabbed at the bottle and took a long swig then moved just close enough to shove it into the younger man's grasp watching as he brought it to his lips the long line of his throat pulsating as he swallowed a long draught. In his mind's eye he imagined baring that marble pillar to his lips and teeth bringing the blood to the surface, bruising it, and rapidly looked away pushing the thought down, pulling the oxygen into his lungs and with it the clean, salt smell of the man who sat only feet away radiating desire for him.

Fuck what was he doing, how had this happened and how had he let it get this far? His mind whirled with fractured images. Just hours before his thoughts had been full of Vanessa, wanting her, imagining her naked in his bed his hands and mouth moving over her and yet now his every sensation was full of the man who sat in front of him. The man whom he'd imagined over and over again beating to a pulp for denying him what he thought was his dearest wish and yet now his hands, those hands that had wanted to wound and hurt, wanted to touch in an altogether different way. He needed a drink but the bottle was clutched in the young doctor's hand and held between his legs; to approach Victor again, ripe with the scent of his arousal was too dangerous, too desirable.

"Ethan?" He looked up to see Victor learning forward his eyes still hot with want but now shadowed with confusion. "I'm sorry. I just have never felt anything like this before. Oh my God you think I'm disgusting." And to his horror tears began to flow down the flushed cheeks twisted with self-loathing.

He couldn't help it in three strides he was back over to the settle his arms enfolding the beautiful boy in his arms who clung to him like he was the only stable thing in his world comforting noises issuing from his mouth his hands rubbing circles into the shuddering back.

"Victor no, Christ no I don't find you disgusting, far from it." He had to hold in the chuckle that threated deep at the back of his throat knowing how inappropriate it would sound. Victor was anything but disgusting and if he was, what did that make him? As the sobs lessened he pulled gently back to look at the younger man his hands finding his face cupping it gently as he thumbed away the tears that stained his cheeks. The familiarity and irony of this gesture was not lost on him as he looked deep into the doctor's blue eyes marvelling that he hadn't ever succumbed before, hadn't ever realised the obvious attraction he had to the man sitting in front of him. He didn't know whether to laugh, cry or scream all the time fighting back the urge just to carry on where they'd left off. It would be so easy to pick him up carry him to his bed and there teaching him what it really was to love another.

He felt the doctor moving forward trying to increase the bodily contact between them. He moved his hands then to Victor's shoulders holding him back from surging forward the passion in his eyes building again at their proximity.

"Darlin' wait."

"Wait…" he intoned more strongly as Victor pushed forward again his lips open, trying to recapture that searing kiss. Ethan quickly grabbed the bottle of brandy and filled their glasses pushing an almost full one into the doctor's hands trying to ignore the jolt of want as their fingers brushed.

"Drink." He urged as he tossed a mouthful of the smooth liquid down his own throat.

"Are you trying to get me drunk Mr. Chandler? Believe me if really isn't necessary if seduction is your aim." The sad smile that stretched Victor's mouth at his weak joke made him long to reach out and brush his thumb over those full lips that moments ago had been almost the focus of his world but he resisted the urge watching as he emptied his glass and then himself refilled it to the brim.

"We need to talk Victor, and you need to think. You're a married man. Married to a wonderful woman, a woman that.." the 'we' almost slipped out, "that whatever you are feeling now are in love with. This urge is nothing more than a reaction to the situation you find yourself in. Marriage is hard and it's gonna be cooped up in that house with all its past looming over you. Our friendship is new and I can't deny there is something between us but you've misread more into it. You're drunk and tired and frustrated and you think that this…." He waved his hand between them, "will help."

He watched as Victor tossed back the liquid in his glass and then locked his eyes back on his although Ethan could see that the liquor was taking its toll as his eyes lacked clarity and seemed unfocused.

"So you don't want me then?" It tore from the younger man's mouth like an accusation slightly slurred with the amount of alcohol swimming round his small body.

Again he had to hold back the laugh that threated to tear from his mouth knowing this in his fragile state Victor would interpret it wrongly. Want him. Christ it was taking every ounce of his resolve not to throw him down and take his virginity. Sitting there, his clothing awry his, hair raked through by his own fingers his lips swollen and red as a result of his mouth on them, his eyes hot with desire and filled with confusion he was everything he'd ever wanted and more in a lover but he had to resist, he knew he couldn't give in. The mess, the anguish it would cause to all of them caught in this triangle of love, want and pain. Vanessa's face suddenly filled his mind. Her eyes intent with her love, her mouth stretched into that smile, the smile she only used for him with that tiny hint of ire at the corner. Whatever he felt for the man in front of him he knew that it was her he truly wanted, that burnt him soul deep and had brought him back over a cold sea. He had left her once to pursue his own path, he could not do so again. He could not betray her love and trust again despite his wants and needs or those of her husband.

"Victor all I want to do at this moment is to rip your clothes from you and lay my mouth and my hands on every part of you. I want you like no other man I've ever met. I want to take you to my bed, love you, fuck you and then hold you all night in my arms. But what happens in the morning? How do I,… how do you face Vanessa with that between us?"

Victor made to speak but he placed his hand lightly over his mouth feeling the softness of those lips against his palm and the hot wet breath.

"We can't betray her like that. **_I_** can't. I've hurt her so much in the past leaving her when she needed help and protection. Abandoning her to God only knows what until you saved her." He took his hand then from Victor's mouth poured and then pressed another large drink into his hands. He needed to remove the temptation of an awake and aroused Victor from the equation.

"I can't hurt her again. She's only just forgiven me for the past. I can't bring her world crashing down around her again because of my own selfish wants. I'm sorry Victor. I truly am. Christ if I were…., you were…., she was anyone else believe me darlin' tonight would have played out very differently."

He watched the young doctor struggle to drink the last dregs of his glass down. His eyes were struggling to stay open, his head lolling on a neck that seemed too weak to hold it up. As he began to fall into a drunken doze he pulled the young man into his arms allowing his head to fall into the crook of his neck holding him against him feeling his breathing slow as he drifted off. With genuine affection he held him caressing his back and arms and brushed a kiss across the smooth forehead. When he was sure he was asleep he picked him up his weight no issue for him and laid him on the bed covering his finally relaxed body with a blanket. For long moments he looked into the beautiful face below him and thought how it could be between them. Victor Frankenstein would not be an easy man to love, he would challenge him in ways that no other could but it would be a good love, passionate and fulfilling. He ran his fingers across the young face and then finally dropped his mouth to press a gentle kiss to the mouth of the man he felt not only a profound respect and affection for but now a deep abiding love.

As quietly as he could he had found his coat and hat pulled them on and left the room and the source of temptation behind.

And so he found himself leaning against the scarred door of his lodgings his mind and body in disarray. He'd returned to London all those months ago for one reason – to hurt. But the anguish he found that had crashed down on him was more than he'd ever expected. He had expected to feel pain had welcomed it but this was suffering beyond anything imagined and now he wanted rid of it. Two options sprung immediately to mind. The first to run. To run away from this anguish to leave it behind but he knew he couldn't, running had not worked before. The physical act of putting space however many thousands of miles between him and now the two people he wanted had not succeeded before. He knew beyond doubt that he'd find his way back and what then?

His hand strayed then to his hip to the heavy weight that was always present there. How easy to take that path to remove himself in the simple act of putting a bullet through his brain. It would no longer be his problem in that act he could truly walk away. But he knew that too was an impossibility. He needed to see her. He needed to look on her face one more time before he made any decision.

Somehow he knew despite the late hour that she was still awake that she would be aware of his torment and would be waiting for him.

He also knew that it was finally time for complete and transparent honesty.


	10. Chapter 10

Grandage Place was in darkness as he approached it and his first instinct to knock at the front door was quickly quashed by his own realisation that despite wanting to be honest, there was only one person he wanted to be honest with. He had to see her and her alone because only she would be able to provide him with the succour he needed. Also the need not to stain her reputation, submit it to the idle gossip of servants stopped his hand.

Like a shadow he slipped round the back of the house, retrieved the back door key from the hiding place that never changed and entered the darkened kitchen, the only light emanating from the kitchen fire banked for the night. The house was quiet though not silent. Through the door leading the succession of small rooms that he'd rarely had need to enter he could hear the muffled, sonorous snores of Bennett. For a moment his heart contracted knowing that Sembene would have woken at his step on the threshold and before he'd even put the key in the lock would have been there to challenge the intrusion. But his friend, the man the monster he was had slaughtered, had for over a year now resided in the hot, red earth of his home and the pain still blossomed like a fresh wound.

Although he was sure that Bennett was a heavy sleeper he removed his boots to ensure he made no more noise than necessary and made his way through the sleeping house. His mind as he climbed the stairs replayed what had occurred between him and Victor less than an hour before and desire flooded through him again. Part of him wanted to deny his part in it. To admit to only Victor's misdemeanour, to brand him a miscreant and leave himself untainted. To beg her to leave with him that very night because the fact her husband could not love her physically was because he only had want of his own sex. How easy it would be to let Victor take the blame to transpose the pain onto his slight form to walk away vindicated but it was impossible. He knew she was too wise, her mind and gaze too astute. She would see past his fabrication straight to the truth and as a result he would become less in her eyes and he could not bear that. The truth needed to be told, pure and unadulterated; it was what she, all of them deserved.

As he climbed the stairs to the upper floor other scenarios found their way into his brain. The three of them could leave London together and find a small house, somewhere private, somewhere out of the way. They could live there together. Build a life together. Find some way of being together. For God's sake they all loved each other, why could they not find a way of making it work and be damned to convention and respectability. When had those concepts ever mattered to people like them? The idea of having them both, being able to love them as he wanted to, not to have to make a decision was incredibly appealing. The allure of Victor's livid innocence in juxtaposition to the lure of Vanessa's deep passion was a heady mix that both the man and beast in him ached to explore. To mark them as his with his mouth and hands, to feel them come undone under him and around him excited his desire further than he'd ever experienced. But there was more, more beyond the physical. He wanted to hold them, care for them, protect them, for his body to be their shield against the scorn of day and the horrors of the night. Together they made him whole. Together they created a triptych. An unholy trinity of sorts. But in the deepest recesses of his heart he knew that it would never work. They loved too deeply, too passionately, too completely to share even with each other. That eventually something akin to jealousy would enter and then what? As difficult it was to choose between them now, once marked as his, once laid bare to the beast within him it would become impossible. Their love would spoil, fester and with that they would lose everything. He would lose everything again and that was the pain that would rip him apart.

He hesitated just as he got to her door aching to see her and yet terrified of the consequences that could come from the words that were going to pass between them. Again he raised his hand to knock and again thought better of it. This was not a moment for conventionality. He had come to stake a claim whatever that was going to be and the polite mannerisms of society meant nothing here. Carefully he pushed out with his wolf sense, finding her spirit as if the wood between them was nothing. He could feel her awake and waiting the part of her that was akin to him had known the moment he'd stepped into her domain and so he pushed open the door.

The light was dim, only the fire in the grate casting any light into the room but even in the blackest darkness he would not have struggled to find her so imbued with her scent as he was. She stood in front of the fire, her hair an ebony wave cascading over and becoming part of the dark, silk shawl she had wrapped round her thin shoulders one hand clasping the front at her neck the other holding a smoking cigarette. Dressed as she was in tones of shadow she resembled more than ever the woman he remembered. The woman from before. The woman he'd left. Dressed in those tones she was his and the realisation hit him as wild as the storm on the moor and as gentle as the touch of her hand against his cheek. Swathed in pale colours she had pledged, shown her allegiance to Victor but enveloped in the shades of nights she demonstrated kinship to him. They were both creatures of the night.

For a long moment he made no moment towards her content just to gaze at her to see her stripped of her armour of clothing dressed for private moments, reserved only for the eyes of a husband or lover. She too was still her eyes soft on his face her expression neutral but he could feel the depth of her feeling washing over him imbruing his skin. There was no pain and it almost broke his heart to feel that total acceptance.

He moved then to stand behind her and pulled her against him one arm over her chest his hand on her shoulder the other wrapped round her supple waist. She relaxed immediately into him melding her body to his, welcoming the support, allowing him the control, content to be held, submitting to his strength and protection. Again they stood for a quiet moment and he knew like him she gazed into the fire although there was no sign in her of the whirl of emotions that flooded though him. It felt so good to hold her, to be alone with her. Of course he was conscious of her lack of clothing and the close proximity of the bed. The fact that only seconds were between his hands and her naked flesh. He wanted her, God he always did and always would but he could not take her with what there was between them. His mind slipped away to a room two miles away where a young men slept curled into sheets musky with his scent and his heart bled that he too was not here wrapped in his arms, safe in his love.

"Victor's safe?" Her words, a curious echo of his own thoughts softly spoken, shattered the silence almost as if she'd screamed them.

"He's sleeping in my bed. He drank a lot of brandy."

"He could never hold his drink." The light laugh that punctuated this utterance was gentle and he knew even without looking that she smiled and her eyes glowed with affection. The silence stretched again although there was no embarrassment it was nothing but comfortable until she said, "Did you make love?"

Before he spoke he dropped his arms and moved to stand in front of her. This moment and those that would follow were not ones to be had behind backs, comforted by embraces with eyes hidden. What would fall from their mouths needed the stark honesty of faces, of eyes looking into each other's. The fact that she was aware of her husband's predilections and his came as no surprise and in fact made what he had to say easier.

"No. We kissed. He initiated it but I didn't stop him. He wanted me and God Vanessa I wanted him too and if it hadn't been for you I would be there now, with him."

Her look was steady and cool. "So you love him." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"And I love him too."

"Yes."

"But you love me and I love you."

He nodded the urge to pull her into his arms was almost overwhelming but he knew he must not. He knew he had no right to put any kind of pressure on her.

"Oh my love what a tangled web we have woven." She lifted the cigarette to her lips inhaling deeply before flicking the end into the fire.

She moved then to sit on the bed and patted the coverlet inviting him to sit with her. As he sat down she smiled at him and in her eyes for the first time since his return he saw her heart reflected there and as before a stab of agony ripped through his.

"Why in such joy my darling does there have to be so much pain? And there will be pain because one or all of us will be hurt in this. Even if, as I am sure you have thought we try to live together in the end the love we share will damage, become undone. If Victor loves you even a part of how I love you sharing you will eventually tear him apart. I know what jealously I would feel watching you leave my bed to be with him. Imagining you together, the kisses and touches that should be mine being given to him. And when you returned the unspoken thoughts, the terror that you might prefer him to me that whilst you are with me, you were thinking of him, wanting him. And yet in loving him how can I deny him that love and how can I deny you him?"

He was astounded at her honesty and also her acceptance. He remembered back to a dark night where she'd run to him in terror, when he'd held her and then finally tucked her into his bed. She had told him she was there to accept him but the secret that lay so hard between them did not allow him to believe it but now, finally he did. And in that moment he found clarity. It was like up until that moment he'd been looking through stained glass but the colour was now bleached and for the first time his vision was clear, unobscured, true.

He stood, looking down into the face that had haunted his every moment since he'd first laid eyes on it and then sunk to his knees before her, a supplicant to her power, to her love placing his head for a moment into her lap, feeling her fingers in his hair before he lifted it to stare deep into her eyes.

"Whatever happens Vanessa Ives I am yours. Whatever you decide I swear on my tainted blood for what it is worth that I am with you and will be with you for eternity. I came back for you and whatever there might be between me and Victor it is nothing compared to what I feel for you. It was the thought of you that stopped me from doing any more tonight than I did. It is you I want, have always wanted in whatever capacity you need but if you don't want me, then I won't go back to him. I can't."

"And I can no longer live this lie Ethan. To live without you is like living without oxygen. Your happiness even at the expense of his is something I have to make my first priority. The only way I can make you happy is to walk away from him and our marriage despite the consequences. By giving you my heart and soul I will break his, but then it was always yours."

The mixture of joy and pain on her face he knew was a reflection of his own. Joy overwhelming because she had chosen him, would be his but edged with pain. His own at hurting the man that had not only saved his life but kept his very reason for being safe together with the pain of thwarted desire. And then there was Victor's pain. The fact that not only would he deny him his love but would also take from him the only other person that loved him, would leave him alone, suffering alone.

He leaned forward then and pressed his mouth to hers revelling in its sweetness in the rightness of it but pulled away as his passion began to stir.

"We need to talk to Victor. Face him together, try and make him understand, if we can. I'll leave you to dress." And he got up and left the room. He knew that she would have not asked him to leave, that she would have been happy to change with him there. In every sense he was more husband to her than the young man that lay, he hoped still asleep in his bed. But until he saw Victor he could not risk being with her in a position that could ignite further the passion he felt for her. Even fully dressed he found her alluring and the prospect of being in the same room as her disrobed would, he knew have stretched his will further than he thought it could bare.

And so he waited for the second time that night leaning against the wood of a door, his thoughts focused on the bitter sweet tragedy that would end that night.

When she emerged from the room he was not surprised to see her dressed in one of her old outfits of deepest mourning black, her hair pulled severely away from her face. With this choice she had pinned her colours to a standard, his standard and she looked as though she were dressed for battle and he supposed she was as such, a battle for happiness but one that they would fight together against a beloved enemy. She smiled on seeing him raising her hand to his cheek to cup it gently before slipping it into his and just as on that rain torn evening outside the shelter for the sick and destitute he experienced the total rightness of her palm against his, their fingers entwined.

Silently they moved down the stairs leaving by the front door. He would no longer walk in the shadows with her hiding away from the eyes of others. They would leave this house side by side as they always should have and would continue to walk together in defiance of what others would say. The journey back to him rooms was silent and slow in the velvet blackness of the night, they were in no hurry to reach their destination but if she were worried about what would ensue once they got there she showed no fear, her head held high and every once in a while she would turn to look at him squeezing his hand and smiling at him which caused his heart to flip in pained pleasure.

As they came up to the door of his lodgings she spoke for the first time since leaving Grandage Place asking him to stop before he put the key into the door.

She stood in front of him as close as she could without touching him and looked deep into his eyes. What he saw there was enough to convince him that even if he hadn't been sure of what they were about to do it was the only thing they could do. Her eyes shone and in them he saw pure, unfettered love. Tenderly he gathered her into his arms pulling her into the strength of his body wanting to absorb every fibre of her being into him to reassure her of his utter love and complete commitment to her, his willingness to fight for her even against another he loved. If he had to die in that instance he knew he finally would have died happy.

The hall was empty and the door of his room was shut as he'd left it. For a moment he laid his hand against the wood reaching out to the young doctor but he was not surprised he could not sense him, the connection between them would never be the primordial bond he felt for the woman that stood silently next to him.

Quietly he pushed the door open. The candles had guttered out and the fire was only glowing embers but even in the dimness he could see the room was empty. The bed in which he'd so tenderly laid Victor down was made, the coverlet smoothed the only flaw a piece of paper. The feelings that crashed through him were so mixed for a second he found it difficult to breath. Joy, hope, fear, relief, despair reeled through him in equal measure punctuated by a sharp intake of breath from Vanessa.

It was Vanessa who recovered first moving quickly to the bed and picking up the paper.

She peered at the writing scrawled across the front and then looked up.

"It's for both of us. Light the candles Ethan. We should read it together."

He did as she asked and then moved to join her on the settle that a few hours ago he'd sat with the man who'd penned this note before he'd disappeared into the night. The man who if circumstances had been different would now be lying in the circle of his arms their bodies sated, skins dewy with sweat, and his heart clenched. Vanessa opened the paper and together they began to read the words scrawled across the whiteness.

'Dear Ethan and Vanessa,

The rightness of your two names written side by side on a page is evidence enough that my decision to leave is also right. I looked so long for love and finding it with both of you has shown me its true nature. But I also see that I stand in a place I have no right to and in doing so I deny the two people I love their true love. Love should not be hidden, repressed, locked away. It should be revealed, celebrated, released and my exit will allow that. Will allow you to love freely as you should, to be together as you need. It was always the two of you, I was never more than a shadow cast by your light.

I thank you both for your love, for showing one such something I never thought I was worthy of.

Victor '

He looked up from the page to find her looking at him a single tear glistening on the alabaster of her cheek and again the notion of clarity, of finally seeing the truth struck him. If anyone was undeserving of love it was not the pale physician who'd penned this note full of love it was him a man with sin stitched into every fibre of his being. And yet love had been gifted to him. Victor's love and most of all the love of the goddess who sat by his side, her heart in her eyes.

The searing pain of want and denial had been washed away to be replaced with the sweet agony that was the realisation of utter love and utter loss.

Finally he reached for her and she came into his arms and fit against his body like she was meant to, like she'd always been meant to. As she clung to him, her face buried into his chest he raised his hands to her hair pulling the pins that secured it allowing it to cascade down merging with the darkness of her dress. She looked up then her eyes shining her mouth curved finally into a true smile and laid her hand against his cheek. He looked deep into her eyes, feasting on what he saw there and then took her left hand in his. Still not speaking he looked down at the slim gold band that still encircled her finger and touched it gently. Her other hand immediately moved and started to pull it off.

"No, don't darlin' leave it." He murmured. Although for months that ring had been a thorn in his side, the physical representation of why she couldn't be his and he'd wanted to rip it from her hands he knew he now wanted it to stay. It represented sacrifice and would stay as a reminder of that and the love he had for the man who'd made it. Carefully he reached into his vest pocket and slipped the ring he'd removed from there onto the same finger to sit on top of Victor's. It was a simple golden band studded with tiny alternate black and white pearls.

"It was my mother's, it's the only thing I have left of her. She told me to give it to my wife on our wedding day. So I give it to you with my heart and ask you Vanessa Ives will you take me as your husband of the heart?"

Her finger caressed the two bands and then softly her eyes glowing sapphire bright she looked up at him.

"I do."


End file.
